A heartbroken mum has issued a warning after her son sadly died following botched weight-loss surgery in Turkey. Joe Thornley, from Derbyshire, had travelled to Istanbul for a gastric sleeve procedure, an operation in which a large part of the stomach is cut away.
The 25-year-old had a heart attack during the operation and was unable to be saved, his mother Julie was told. But a post-mortem examination revealed that Joe had actually died from internal bleeding, as he had bled at the site of the operation.
Julie, 58, said that, when Joe booked the operation online, she had not been concerned because it "looked like a nice hospital". But she is now warning others to be careful when considering cheap surgeries, reports YorkshireLive.
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She says: "It looked like a nice hospital and it had good reviews. I didn’t think anything would go wrong. A few days later the so-called surgeon rang me and said he had a cardiac arrest and he couldn’t save him. I believed him.
"But when we had his body back the post-mortem found he had bled at the site of the operation. He died of internal bleeding. It was the aftercare, or they didn’t realise he was bleeding."
Joe had hoped that the surgery would help him to slim down from 19 stone, but his devastated mum has now told people that "it's not worth it". She is urging others to "be very, very careful where you go. Or don't go at all."
Sadly, Joe's story is not unusual - as scores of Brits are travelling abroad to countries such as Turkey for cheap surgery. Some hospitals are offering gastric sleeve and bypass operations for as little as £3,000, which is appealing for patients who cannot bear the NHS waiting lists.
But UK surgeons are warning people that they are risking dodgy operations and poor aftercare, reports BirminghamLive. And, according to data from the Foreign Office, a total of 20 Brits have died during medical tourism trips to Turkey since January 2019.
Specialist surgeon, Nick Carter, says that "every hospital" in the UK has had to perform emergency operations on people who have returned from having cut-price surgery in Turkey. He says: "I have had disasters of people who have had emergency operations a day or two after their procedures in Turkey and they have come back with issues. I have someone with mesh sticking out of their abdominal wall. One case presented... and [surgeons] had left some dead tissue inside them and they needed emergency surgery.
"Every bariatric surgeon I talk to has the same story. I have also heard from patients who say ‘I was poorly and they just pushed me out of hospital’. It would be wrong to say that’s happening in all Turkish hospitals, but certainly it is happening in some."
Omar Khan is a consultant bariatric surgeon and had to perform two corrective surgeries in a single week, on patients with botched foreign ops. He says: "There is a perception that weight loss surgery is a bit like a tummy tuck.
"The problem is that when bariatric surgery goes wrong there’s the potential for catastrophic problems. If there is a leak it can cause really severe infections and it needs to be managed quickly, appropriately and effectively."
And Ahmed Ahmed, a consultant bariatric surgeon and Council member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, warns: "We strongly advise patients who are considering undergoing bariatric or other types of surgery abroad to research their options carefully. While it may appear cheaper to undergo surgery abroad, standards and guidelines vary from country to country."
But it is not just bariatric surgery that Brits are suffering abroad for, as scores of people from the UK are also travelling to Turkey for cheap dental work. Known as 'Turkey Teeth', the dodgy dentistry is leaving people with agonising nerve damage and irreparable injury.
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